Total ionizing dose effects in GaAs-Si based electronic components

Electronic components are widely used in nuclear instrumentation. They are used to handle analog/digital signals emanating from the field devices for processing by I&C systems in nuclear reactor and reprocessing plant. These devices suffer degradation in their performance due to radiation damage leading to the malfunctioning in the system operation. Rad-Hard components are costlier and difficult to find in the market. As an alternative, commercially available components can be used for various applications in nuclear reactor after proving the radiation tolerance of specific commercial parts and engineering system level design to improve reliability. In this work, Total Ionizing Dose (TID) effect was studied in GaAs-Si based 4N35 optocoupler by irradiating with
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Co gamma-rays to doses up to 2Mrad and the effects of irradiation on the device's current transfer ratio (CTR) was recorded and analyzed. The main emphasis was on TID damage under conditions that are representative of nuclear reactor environment.